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Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

buildtheenterprise.org

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Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#71

Post by anigbrowl »

pygorex wrote: post #65
anigbrowl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not all that great at swimming either, and yet building oceangoing boats and ships has turned out to be an important part of our technological development. Likewise air travel; we're only evolutionarily optimized for walking about on land, but have used technology to travel and transport goods over large distances on water and in the air.

Those are all fair points. But they don't really address my assertion: 1. I am not arguing that our evolutionary past should dictate where we explore. Rather, I'm arguing it must inform how we explore. Space travel is so lethal for our species that we are better off engineering machines, robots or beings that are specialized to operate in space. 2. The energy expenditure, economic cost and sheer distance of space exp…

I agree with you on all these things, but subject to qualification. I think we need to be developing human spaceflight in parallel with robotic exploration, for the same reason that we don't do all our exploration on earth with telescopes. Air travel is orders of magnitude more difficult than sea travel, which is orders of magnitude more difficult than wandering about on land. I think there is no substitute for getting out there and attempting a wide variety of technological workarounds, notwithstanding the fact that many of these will be futile or fatal. The key plus for me of private or even semi-private space exploration is that failure or fatality won't mean a loss of political capital, compared to publicly-owned and managed space endeavors. Bluntly, we're more likely to discover better technologies if people are allowed to blow themselves up in the pursuit of same. On the last point, planetary colonization is one (remote) endpoint, if we can bootstrap it, but I think asteroid mining and the like also offers the potential of non-planetary habitation, which I find far more interesting. I remain optimistic about the possibility of other propulsive or spatial traversal methods, notwithstanding the limitations from our current theories of physics, though this is a statement about faith in technological progress rather than a specific hypothesis.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#72

Post by blackhole »

pygorex wrote: post #44
breckinloggins wrote: post #14

There's a lot of negativity around this idea, and mostly for good reason. But if you peel away the "let's build the Enterprise!" specifics and think about the core of the proposal, I believe it is sound. A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s. The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, and what's worse... w…

> A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s. The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, And the ideal of manned spaceflight should remain in the 60's - at least for the foreseeable future. We are magnificently evolved to inhabit this planet. The remainder of the solar system is insanely hostile to our form of…

So long as we don't blow said planet up, which so far we have come disturbingly close to doing several dozen times.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#73

Post by anigbrowl »

tptacek wrote: post #2

Here's NASASPACEFLIGHT.COM making fun of this: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=28821.0

I wish the engineers at NASA spaceflight, instead of taking a dump on the guy, would applaud his enthusiasm and then explain the better and cooler things that could be achieved with a trillion dollars over 20 years. Technologically they're dead right, but they come off as a bunch of unimaginative jerks.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#74

Post by TeMPOraL »

ginko wrote: post #49
TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need a ship that can safely and reliably take people to Earth orbit and back at a price normal people can afford. That's what needs to be actually built, but it's not how human imagination works. To capture imagination, you make people watch this: http://youtu.be/_yijcWsLda8?hd=1&t=9s or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7DEw70LVWs You need to touch the heart, connect with people's desires, emotions and dre…

I personally didn't like the intros of Enterprise. Partially because its tone didn't feel like a Star Trek intro, but mainly because it completely ignored the incredible achievements of the Soviet space program. You would at least expect a shot of Yuri Gagarin.

> Partially because its tone didn't feel like a Star Trek intro

I felt something quite the opposite; I think that Enterprise intro actually best captured the spirit of whole Star Trek - the dream of exploration, advancement and excellence.

Fair point about the Russians though; they deserve more credit that they usually get nowdays.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#75

Post by InclinedPlane »

pygorex wrote: post #44
breckinloggins wrote: post #14

There's a lot of negativity around this idea, and mostly for good reason. But if you peel away the "let's build the Enterprise!" specifics and think about the core of the proposal, I believe it is sound. A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s. The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, and what's worse... w…

> A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s. The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, And the ideal of manned spaceflight should remain in the 60's - at least for the foreseeable future. We are magnificently evolved to inhabit this planet. The remainder of the solar system is insanely hostile to our form of…

The same could be said for climbing mountains or racing cars at high speeds. The point isn't just to gain knowledge though, the point is to go, to do, to live.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#76

Post by stcredzero »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #46
breckinloggins wrote: post #14

There's a lot of negativity around this idea, and mostly for good reason. But if you peel away the "let's build the Enterprise!" specifics and think about the core of the proposal, I believe it is sound. A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s. The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, and what's worse... w…

As a huge fan of space I agree we need progress, but we can achieve that by no longer 'visiting' space and instead 'moving' there. I was talking with a JPL engineer about SpaceX and he said something which really knocked me for a loop. He said "We don't live in space, we camp there." And by example he suggested what if there was no food, fuel, or running water in Barstow California. Everyone would have to carry what…

Back in 1988, a Canadian scientist was commissioned by a 2nd world power to build a system that could be used for orbital launch 4 orders of magnitude cheaper per pound to orbit than what SpaceX can do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon

It would have involved firing payloads out of a very large cannon, then firing a rocket onboard to circularize the orbit, so this is not for manned launch, but we should be able to ship bulk items like fuel, oxygen, and water this way.

Every time we launched the shuttle we took perfectly good fuel and burned it up in the atmosphere because we had no way to take the left overs from the external tank and store them in orbit.

We also burned up a perfectly good contamination free vacuum-proof hull the size of a 747 fuselage that was already 99% of the way in orbit. (External tank.)

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#77

Post by waiwai933 »

tomjen3 wrote: post #47
existentialmutt wrote: post #25

What, no kickstarter page?

Do there even exist a trillion dollar? I don't mean a trillion dollars worth of wealth, but a trillion dollar in currency (or even as deposits in banks)?

Well, the US Gross Domestic Product is over $15 trillion, so presumably, yes.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#79

Post by thebigshane »

rmc wrote: post #4
nextstep wrote: post #3

Maybe this is a joke and I'm taking it too seriously, but doesn't the Enterprise run on antimatter? I don't think we're going to be able to manufacture antimatter in large quantities in the next 20 years.

The faster than speed of light thing'll be hard aswell.

Simple. Change the gravitational constant of the universe.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708699/quotes?qt=qt0403693]

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#80

Post by stcredzero »

civilian wrote: post #58
theorique wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a space elevator cost only $10-20B? Burj Khalifa, a half-mile high building cost $1-2B already. Hard to imagine a space elevator costing only 10-20x the price of the world's tallest building. A space elevator would presumably need to use a range of as yet non-existent and/or unproven technologies (very long carbon nanotube ropes, etc).

Yeah. I think the 10-20b is based off of stronger carbon nanotubes. But I think we have strong enough nanotubes at the moment. However, the stronger they get, the fewer we have to use, and the cheaper it will be.

You don't even need to build all the way to orbit or even space. A 20km tall tower made out of ordinary steel with a launch accelerator built into it would dramatically reduce the cost to orbit.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/27775/

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